Quotes from The Legacy Letters

Things I Don’t Know “Respect both what you need to know and what you don’t need to know. Respect mystery, for mystery is still needed to run the universe.”

The Everything and Nothing of Money “Remember, Little Ones, everything is not important all the time. Only living is important all the time. Not things. Not money. Not more things and more endless money. Spend well the quality of your time. And yes, be greedy with your hours. If only to then give those hours away as the most precious gifts you have to offer to yourself, your family, and your friends. And yes, to my Little Ones.”

Why read? “Because books are precious guides to our humanity—civilization’s backbone—that tenuous ridgeline that allows us to climb above the jungle and see what the horizon has to offer. Thus they represent the yearning to go beyond, to explore. Yet they are also human-sized. And made of paper and ink, and thus they come from the earth. Their physicality is what makes them immensely human. And they contain the flesh-and-bone thoughts of one person capturing one blink of time, now made immortal in the bound pages carried by your own hands and touched by your own eyes. How can such fragile and thin paper and spidery veins of ink be our most precious treasure, binding together the entire hope and legacy and language of a civilization—of our existence. We touch the book and turn the page, and thus we are bound to our destiny.”

Birthing and Raising Kids “It’s a fool who thinks that having a kid is a right, which is the biggest crock of fishheads I’ve ever heard. You have a responsibility, not only to a person but also to a spirit because that’s what a child is. A pissing, crying, yawning, giggling, laughing package of spirit that is looking for you to take the lead. It’s a heck of a responsibility to look after a spirit.”